“We will dispense with your tears, minstrel,” said Media, “but sing it, if you will.”

And Yoomy sang:—­

    Departed the pride and the glory of Mardi: 
    The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea,
      That rolls o’er his corpse with a hush. 
      His warriors bend over their spears,
      His sisters gaze upward and mourn. 
        Weep, weep, for Adondo, is dead! 
      The sun has gone down in a shower;
      Buried in clouds in the face of the moon;
    Tears stand in the eyes of the starry skies,
      And stand in the eyes of the flowers;
    And streams of tears are the trickling brooks,
      Coursing adown the mountains.—­
    Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi: 
    The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea. 
    Fast falls the small rain on its bosom that sobs.—­
      Not showers of rain, but the tears of Oro.

“A dismal time it must have been,” yawned Media, “not a dry brook then in Mardi, not a lake that was not moist.  Lachrymose rivulets, and inconsolable lagoons!  Call you this poetry, minstrel?”

“Mohi has something like a tear in his eye,” said Yoomy.

“False!” cried Mohi, brushing it aside.

“Who composed that monody?” said Babbalanja.  “I have often heard it before.”

“None know, Babbalanja but the poet must be still singing to himself; his songs bursting through the turf in the flowers over his grave.”

“But gentle Yoomy, Adondo is a legendary hero, indefinitely dating back.  May not his monody, then, be a spontaneous melody, that has been with us since Mardi began?  What bard composed the soft verses that our palm boughs sing at even?  Nay, Yoomy, that monody was not written by man.”

“Ah!  Would that I had been the poet, Babbalanja; for then had I been famous indeed; those lines are chanted through all the isles, by prince and peasant.  Yes, Adondo’s monody will pervade the ages, like the low under-tone you hear, when many singers do sing.”

“My lord, my lord,” cried Babbalanja, “but this were to be truly immortal;—­to be perpetuated in our works, and not in our names.  Let me, oh Oro! be anonymously known!”

CHAPTER XXXIX Wherein Babbalanja Discourses Of Himself

An interval of silence was at last broken by Babbalanja.

Pointing to the sun, just gaining the horizon, he exclaimed, “As old Bardianna says—­shut your eyes, and believe.”

“And what may Bardianna have to do with yonder orb?” said Media.